ARB supports administrative path for vehicle display reviews, asks more work on screening for other items

Albemarle County planning staff briefed the Architecture Review Board on June 8 on a proposed zoning-text amendment (ZTA) to convert many entrance-corridor outdoor-display special-use-permit (SUP) reviews into an administrative process. The proposal would codify standardized conditions — such as requiring display vehicles to be parked in striped spaces, prohibiting elevation of vehicles, establishing perimeter and interior landscaping standards, and limiting illumination (staff cited a ground-illumination cap example of 20 foot-candles) — that staff and the ARB could enforce administratively rather than through the multi-step SUP process.

Staff told the board that since establishment of the entrance corridors in 1990 the county had received 56 outdoor-display SUP applications (50 approved, most with standardized conditions) and that many of the approval conditions have become routine. For passenger-vehicle displays staff recommended converting to an administrative path because vehicle display lots most closely resemble standard parking lots and approvals tend to focus on orderly appearance, landscaping and lighting limits.

For displays of items other than passenger vehicles (for example, tractors, bobcats, furniture, garden supplies), staff proposed screening standards including minimum planting strips, vegetation depths and fencing/wall standards, and suggested standards for item heights relative to screening. Board members generally supported simplifying passenger-vehicle display reviews but asked staff to refine screening approaches for non-vehicle displays, to consider temporary versus permanent displays, corridor-specific differences (for example Route 29 vs. other corridors), and thresholds (including a potential special-exception or appeal path) so that the admin process would not eliminate necessary board oversight in atypical cases.

The ARB directed staff to develop draft ordinance language: codify standardized conditions for passenger-vehicle displays to move administrative review forward, and return with more refined recommendations for screening and corridor-specific guidelines for non-vehicle displays. Staff will use approved SUP conditions and existing ordinance language as a foundation for the draft ZTA.

Attribution: Summaries and cited numbers are drawn from staff’s presentation and the ARB discussion in the June 8 work session.